Throughout their 35-year existence, The Chills (along with the Tall Dwarfs, The Clean, and The Verlaines) have exemplified the so-called “Dunedin sound,” a mix of punk rage and psych-scunged pop that initially surfaced in late-70s New Zealand. Touted by Flying Nun Records as the next-wave crop, bands such as The Same (i.e. The Chills) and The Enemy (later Toy Love and Tall Dwarfs) soon gained cult recognition as supply and demand for NZ rock hit its stride throughout the ’80s and into the early ’90s, when lo-fi hit its resurgence.

While The Clean and The Verlaines are still going strong (Chris Knox of the Tall Dwarfs suffered a stroke in 2009,  putting that band’s status in limbo), a combination of line-up changes, drug problems and a lack of new material over the past decade had cast uncertainty upon Martin Phillipps, the lone tunesmith of The Chills, and the future of his band, until earlier this summer, when Fire Records announced an ongoing partnership with the group. Phillipps and company quickly released their first single since 2004, “Molten Gold,” before following up with this live artifact of classic Chills songs recorded on New Year’s Eve 2011 in Central Otago, New Zealand.

Conceived by Fire as a collaboration with contemporary Kiwi painter Shane Cotton (the vinyl edition comes with a print of his artwork),  Somewhere Beautiful captures the re-emergence of Phillipps with a vamped-up Chills in tow. After years of accumulating dust, Phillipps is as nimble as ever in his middle age, sifting through his array of pop gems—everything from early singles up to the Soft Bomb years—and flinging them out like it’s still 1987. The band backing Phillipps is well rehearsed in its delivery, smutting up the fine edges of The Chills’ storied catalog with an overt rawness that probably hasn’t seen the light of day in quite some time.

The group opens the set with “Night of Chill Blue” and “Wet Blanket,” a pair of tunes from the Brave Words LP, with guitars aglow in an ethereal warmth, before the punk thud of “Nothing Else to Think About” shambles with a pop-dunked sleekness. The frosted keys that begin “Heavenly Pop Hit” are as luminous and vivid as they first were back in 1990, as Phillipps and the band chug through the song with speedy strums and beats before it falls apart at the seams. During “I Love My Leather Jacket,” the band is thrust back into the soot of basement wear and tear, with a Stooge guitar riff that sounds as scorched as molten tar. Meanwhile, the haunting, yet bouncy gait of “Pink Frost” certainly sticks out as one of the more memorable moments of the night.

A live recording in spirit, the album’s minimal production and near omission of applause gives it the feel of a demos offering, much like 2001’s Secret Box did with its collection of ramshackle-quality BBC recordings, outtakes and concert performances. The near hour-long show captured on Something Beautiful provides no shortage of hits with jangle rockers such as “Part Past Part Fiction” and “Effloresce and Deliquesce” included in the set, while some added filler (“Walk on the Beach” and “True Romance” are easy throwaways) somehow made the final cut as well. A welcoming return, it places an emphasis on Phillipps to not let those songwriting chops of his to go to waste anymore and gives any Chills’ enthusiast a reason to pray that a new record is just around the corner while throwing down a couple bucks in the meantime.